Post 5 Troll Hunting, Teddy Roosevelt NP, Devil's Tower

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Aug 21-26

We left the Twin Cities area to make our way to our next big destination, Teddy Roosevelt National Park – all the way across North Dakota.  We did a quick overnight in Staples, MN, then on to Bismarck, ND.   Most of the area is in what is known as the Iron Belt.  The result is a lot of iron in the ground and the water.  Untreated, it comes out of the ground orange and smells like rust.  Even filtered and treated, the picture shows what passes as potable water here at the campground.  It was awful!  We couldn’t even shower in it!  The campground itself was lovely and we were treated to a beautiful sunset. There were 4 species of woodpeckers showing up on our Merlin app, including a noisy piliated. We saw him, but the downy, hairy and red-bellied chose to hide.

On our way to Bismarck, ND we traveled through Detroit Lakes, MN. Detroit Lakes hosts 5 of the Dambo trolls, so we decided to spend our morning troll hunting! Each of these trolls contains a clue to a puzzle.  If you solve the puzzle, it will lead you to another Dambo sculpture, the Golden Rabbit. Success!  We found him!  The trail markers to find all the trolls were purple and yellow birdhouses.

On to an overnight in Bismarck.  It was a wild and windy ride across the prairie!  The wind was so strong that the small ponds and lakes along the road had whitecaps. Our trip went pretty quickly, the speed limit was either 75 or 80!

It’s starting to get chilly at night.  Night time lows are in the mid 50’s.  Maybe time to put the blanket on the bed.

We’ve been having an issue with a slow leak in one of our tires.  Since we had a short drive to our next stop in Dickinson, we decided to hit the tire store for them to check it out.  Our good luck found us a tire store less than a mile away and willing to look at our tire on a busy Saturday morning.  Our tires have one nut on each tire that requires a special socket to remove.  We remember putting the socket in a safe place…but couldn’t remember where that place was!  The tire guy was able to find a way to get the tire off.  He found a nail in it and fixed it.  He also removed the special nuts from the other 3 tires in case we get a flat along the way. He had us on our way in a couple of hours and at a reasonable cost. An Act of Kindness.

With an extra hour due to a time zone change, we still had 4 hours before we could check into our hotel.  We headed off across the vast prairie with nothing but corn, wheat and sunflower fields as far as the eye could see.   We were surprised to see some oil jack pumps close to the road.  We didn't realize oil production was a thing here.

We decided to take a detour down the Enchanted Highway which leads to the small town of Regent.  Gary Greff is a local resident and was concerned that his town was dying.  He tried to figure out what he could do to bring people 30 miles south from the highway to visit Regent. His answer was the creation of giant recycled metal sculptures along the sides of the road.  He started the project in the 1990s and has 7 installations to date.  Each takes 4-6 years to complete.  He continues to work on more.  They’re pretty cool and had a number of tourists visiting them when we did.

We landed in Dickinson mid afternoon and sampled a flight at the local brewery.  No campgrounds available in the area so we landed in a hotel about 30 miles from Teddy Roosevelt National Park.  We were a little spoiled there as it had a full kitchen!

We spent all day Sunday at the National Park.  It was amazing to see how suddenly the land turned from prairie to the Badlands.  After a stop at the visitor center we were off on the 22 mile road through the park. We happened upon an app called GuideAlong.  This app offers an audio tour of the points of interest in the park.  It’s connected to the GPS so it knows exactly where you are and will provide information about that particular point of interest.  In between, our narrator (we call him Guy the Guide) told us the story of Teddy’s life and interest in North Dakota.

The vistas were breathtaking, but similar, only smaller in scale, to the Grand Canyon. Pictures don’t do it justice.  We saw lots of bison and wild horses and a few pronghorns.  The prairie dogs were cute beyond words and super close to the road.  We watched them for a long time.

Next stop, the Badlands of South Dakota, but not without a detour to Devil’s Tower where we spent the night in a campground at the base of the tower.  Before it was a campground the land was part of the Campstool Ranch owned by the Driskill family.  Ellen Driskill had wanted to build a campground on the access road by the entrance to the ranch but couldn’t afford it until Steven Spielburg came knocking on her door.  He wanted to use her land to film the movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind.  As part of their contract, Ellen asked that they remove all the sets and alterations they had made to the land and pay for and develop all the infrastructure needed to support a campground.  At the end of filming, Steven had his movie and Ellen had her campground on the space that the military operation is seen in the movie.  They show the movie and tell the story every night.  It was pretty fun!

The next morning, we packed up and headed to Keystone, SD. 















































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